Rough Cut 2

Here is another clip showing my music video's progression.
Here I have refined my shots to make them seem more professional and I've added in some effects to help the clips flow together.
I have also started placing filters upon some of the clips to represent a bad memory or a good memory - so that they contrast.



From criticisms in the class that state I need more performance and narrative shots I have decided to film these and add them in - my video should be finished after this 3rd round of filming.

Postively, my classmates liked the pace of the shots and how well timed they were with the music change. The filters and editing was also liked because it gave an obvious mood to the clip and made the narrative easier to understand seeing as I wasn't using any diegetic sound.
I feel some of my shots are a bit repetitive so I shall try and film more narrative and performance to fill in these parts and give myself a wider variety of shots overall.

Rough Cut

Here is the rough cut to my music video.

Feedback:

From class feedback the obvious criticism was that it needs to be longer, however what I have so far is said to fit the genre of the band and my miming was well synced with the song.
My narrative also reflects the lyrics of the song and fits the pace of the music, my class also felt pity for the singer which was the idea I wanted to get across.

I am pleased with the miming in my rough cut as I feel the shots are in time and fit,
I have decided to add a lot more narrative to my video than this rough cut contains so as the audience fully understand my interpretation of the lyrics.
I would also like to see more involvement of the singer so I will therefore be filming more shots of him singing/miming.

Bob Dylan - Subterranean Homesick Blues (Analysis)

Originally released in 1965 as a single on Columbia Records.
One of Dylan's first 'electric' pieces, "Subterranean Homesick Blues" was also notable for its innovative film clip, which first appeared in D. A. Pennebaker's documentary, 'Dont Look Back'.

The song's first line is a reference to codeine distillation and politics of the time: "Johnny's in the basement mixing up the medicine / I'm on the pavement thinkin' about the Government". The song also depicts some of the growing conflicts between "straight" or "square" (40-hour workers) and the emerging 1960s counterculture. The widespread use of recreational drugs, and turmoil surrounding the Vietnam War were both starting to take hold of the nation, and Dylan's hyperkinetic lyrics were dense with up-to-the-minute allusions to important emerging elements in the 1960s youth culture.

The song also references the struggles surrounding the American civil rights movement ("Better stay away from those / That carry around a fire hose"). (During the civil rights movement, peaceful protestors were beaten and sprayed with high pressure fire hoses.) In spite of the political nature of the lyrics, the song went on to become the first Top 40 hit for Dylan in the United States.




Analysis
It is apparent that this music video is completely narrative, as shown by the cue cards highlighting certain lyrics. The video itself is entirely one shot which would be quite hard to achieve in one go, the use of one shot is further highlighted by Bob Dylan occasionally making mistakes with the cue cards and their timing.

Both the black and white film and the clothing Bob Dylan is wearing make a statement about the era he is singing from. Ths mis-spelling of some of the cue cards such as "Suckcess" could either be a pun or representative of the workers this video is about - they may not have had such as good education, or none at all, in comparison to upper classes.
The alleyway this appears to be filmed in also looks like a slum area, again reflective of the working class.

The words and phrases written on the cue cards appear to be important in the sense that the director wishes you to remember them and what image they connote.

Props

Here is the prop list for the items used in my music video

These are the props used for the performance side of my video:

Here are the Electric and Bass guitars that were used in filming, however they did not have straps on unfortunately so this is why I have chosen to do some close up shots of them playing so as you could not tell the players were sat down (it was awkward to play the instruments stood up).

This is the drum kit I used in the performance, however we could not find any drum sticks so we had to adapt to using pens instead - hopefully this is not noticeable!

Below is the microphone used by the lead singer, again for realism.

These are the props used for the narrative half of the video:




This and another photograph were used, they were not stuck into the album so as the singer was able to interact with them.
These are supposed to represent past memories and again the singer not being able to let go of what he's lost.




This was the album used in filming, it originally was to demonstrate a metaphor of the couple breaking up however this was too tedious to achieve and instead I chose to use it as a suggestion of memories.




Here is the phone used in my video to also demonstrate the singer cannot let go of the girl as he is ringing her.

Filming Schedule

I found my downfall on this project to be the fact that my filming schedule wasn't very solid, this often resulted in me rushing about trying to film when I could without any thought to it.
Next time with filming I will make sure I plan and know what I'm definitely doing way in advance, resulting in less stress and I will enjoy what I'm doing more.

However from what I filmed this was my schedule:

Day One:

I decided to start filming the narrative to experiment with shots and decide what would look best.
I used Sam and Maddie for this part as they were of course the couple I used in the narrative.
I had to explain to my actors what the song was about so they knew how to act around each other in the right scenes, I feel this went well and we managed to achieve love scenes as well as break up ones effectively.
I enjoyed directing my actors with how to act in the scenes.
However I feel time went too quickly here and I didn't fully know what I wanted to film, I ended up with less filming than I would've liked.

Day Two:

Today I managed to get a loan of instruments (Guitar, bass, drumkit, microphone) from the music department in school and I started filming the performance side of my music video.
This time I used Maddie, Sam, Jodie & Jakub as the constructed band and I decided to use my school stage as the setting because it looked more realistic and represented the target audience well.
We ran into trouble from the beginning of filming as both guitars had no straps and were awkward to hold, and the drumkit had no drum sticks so we had to make do with using pens and hoping that no one would notice!
We overcame the problem of having no guitar straps by getting both players to sit down and play the guitars instead.

Because the singer didn't know the lyrics entirely we often had to reshoot the miming scenes, I played the music in the background so as it was easier for the singer to know when to mime.
I felt the drumkit shots were the best of the day as even though Jakub couldn't play the drums at all he did a pretty good job!

Day Three:

Here I planned what narrative to film and went out to do it as it was a nice sunny day and was perfect for the silhouette shots I wanted.
I felt more comfortable with filming as I had planned ahead and I got a lot more done with shots I preferred.
Overall today I felt I had enough filming to finish my video entirely.

Third Day of Filming

Today I decided to film the remaining amount of narrative I needed to make my video more interesting to watch.

Here are some examples of shots I was particularly pleased with:

Second Day of Filming

Today I started filming the performance side of my music video.
I found it particularly hard to get my band members to mime playing the instruments as well as sing to the lyrics because they didn't know the song very well, however after a few plays of the song we managed to replicate a decent miming of the song.

I also found that time went very quickly during setting up and filming all of the performance, so I found I ran out out time and didn't film as much as I could've. But I am happy with what I have filmed so far, I just have to make sure the props are the same next time to keep continuity.


Here were some accepted shots of the day: